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Reports on sexual predator teachers compel Minister to order urgent review of teacher registration

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Education Minister Hekia Parata has finally ordered an urgent review into the cancellation of teacher registrations for those with serious convictions after it was revealed in the media that three convicted sex offenders still remain registered: (1) deputy school principal James Robertson Parker – sentenced to preventive detention with a minimum non-parole period of seven years after admitting to having committed 74 sex offences against 20 school boys aged 9 to 16 at the time, and dating from 1999 to 2012. He admitted five charges of sexual violation involving two of the boys. (2) Andrew Ray Loader, the Otumoetai College teacher who paid $240 to twice watch teenagers have sex and who was sentenced to 100 hours’ community work in March 2013 (the charge was laid under the Prostitution Reform Act 2003); and (3) Douglas Haora Martin, former assistant principal of Lincoln High School, who filmed up the skirts of 20 unsuspecting girls and women, pleaded guilty in January 2013, and was sentenced in April to 10 months’ home detention. All three [sexual] “predators”, as the NZ Herald refers to them, remain on the Teachers Council register.

As of 11 September 2013:

1. James Robertson Parker (Reg. No. 217428) [referred to as a ‘parasitic paedophile and “one of New Zealand’s worst paedophiles” in a TV 3 News report], is recorded on the Teachers Council website as holding Full Teacher Registration with a practicing certificate that will expire on 5 Oct 2014. The Annotation states “Referred to the Disciplinary Tribunal”. Parker was deputy principal of Pamapuria Primary, Northland when he was first charged with sexual offences against schoolboys.  Despite over a year ago admitting “guilty” to the 74 sex charges relating to sleepovers with boys at his Awanui farm between 1999 and 2012 (the court was told the charges related to upwards of 300 offences) he retains Full Registration.

2. Andrew Ray Loader (Reg. No. 131751) is listed as holding Full Teacher Registration with a “Practicing Certificate” that will expire on 22 September 2015. An “Annotation” states that he “Voluntarily agreed not to teach pending completion of conduct investigation”. The only thing stopping his return to the classroom is that he has “voluntarily agreed” to stop teaching. Therefore despite conviction he is still officially recorded as retaining full teacher registration.

3. Douglas Haora Martin (Reg. No. 133887) is listed as holding Full Teacher Registration with a practicing certificate that expired on 13 April 2013. The Annotation states “Referred to the Disciplinary Tribunal”.

As the NZ Herald reported on Sunday 8 September:

The Teachers Council maintains the register of teachers, which notes any disciplinary action taken. Teachers seriously sanctioned remain on the register with the words “cancelled” and “censured” beside their names – but not Parker, Loader and Martin. They are listed as having full registration.

The council’s director, Peter Lind, is overseas and didn’t comment, but a spokesman said it took time and “due process” for teachers to be deregistered.

It is more than a year since Parker’s August 2012 guilty plea to offending against boys, and three weeks have passed since he was sentenced to preventive detention on 74 sex charges.

The Teachers Council’s complaints assessment committee waited until Parker’s sentencing notes were available before referring him to the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal, which has the power to cancel his registration – but hasn’t yet acted.

Manager of teacher practice Andrew Greig said: “It is important that due process is followed and that natural justice occurs, which is why these processes do take time.”

Only the Disciplinary Tribunal can remove a teacher from the register, and only once the complaints assessment committee has investigated.

Greig said Parker was referred to the tribunal as soon as his sentencing notes were available. “Because the tribunal is able to use the sentencing notes and witness statements as evidence, it means that witnesses do not have to be called before the tribunal.

In the Far North, Te Runanga-a-Iwi o Ngati Kahu chief executive Anahera Herbert-Graves reacted angrily to the news James Parker was still a registered teacher. “You’re kidding? What bastards. Honestly, I just don’t know where the hell their heads are.”

Post Primary Teachers Association president Angela Roberts said parts of the discipline and deregistration process “absolutely” needed refinement. “‘If somebody pleads guilty there should be a fast-track process.

Sources

Predators still on Teachers Council Register

By Kathryn Powley. Sept 8, 2013

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11121378

Community work for voyeur teacher

By Sandra Conchie. Mar 16, 2013

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/bay-of-plenty-times/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503343&objectid=11093674

James Parker a ‘parasitic paedophile’

TV 3 Report. Wednesday 12 June 2013

http://www.3news.co.nz/James-Parker-a-parasitic-paedophile/tabid/1771/articleID/301196/Default.aspx

Radio NZ Morning Report. (Monday, 9 September)

The Teachers’ Council says it will meet as soon as possible with the Ministry of Education following revelations teachers, including paedophiles, remain registered even after pleading guilty to dangerous crimes…..

For full report go to:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2568576/unions-says-deregistration-of-dangerous-teachers-needs-changing

Child abuser James Parker sentenced to preventative detention

By Matthew Theunissen  Thursday Aug 15, 2

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10912715

Urgent review of teacher registration ordered

Dominion Post Wednesday 11 September 2013 p. A2

Pornography being used for teens’ sex education

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Pornography has become the most common form of “sex education” for teenagers – to the point where it is now dictating the way they behave in relationships, new research has found.

Acceptance of violence and extreme sex acts are also on the rise among youth, as more aggression seeps into the increasingly competitive porn market.

Figures from the research, based on academic papers and interviews with young people in Australia, showed that by age 16, 90 per cent of boys and 60 per cent of girls interviewed had encountered porn.

A content analysis showed nearly 90 per cent of scenes included acts of physical aggression – such as hitting, choking or gagging – and that in 94 per cent of cases, the aggression was directed towards women who were often shown enjoying it.

“The young people we spoke to continually described the way porn’s signature sex acts are finding their way into their own sexual activity,” said researcher Maree Crabbe.

“The young women mentioned again and again about feeling pressure from their partners . . . and feeling used and dirty and degraded.”

A documentary based on the research, which experts say would probably be mirrored if a similar study was done in New Zealand, will be screened this week as part of an $800,000 government-funded project into porn by Auckland University. Called Love and Sex in an age of Pornography, it features interviews with more than 70 young people, as well as actors, agents and directors in the porn industry, talking about the increasing aggression in sex movies and the effect it has on our view of “normal” sexual behaviour.

An 18-year-old boy tells how, during his first sexual experience, aged 15, he had “watched so much porn I thought ‘all chicks dig this, all chicks want this done to them’, so I tried all this stuff and, yeah, it turned out bad”.

A 20-year-old woman says: “Boys definitely, I think, watch porn and then expect something like that to be done in real life.”

Crabbe said there were many risks in learning from porn – and they had nothing to do with morals.

For example, porn didn’t use condoms, portrayed scenes with multiple partners and risky hygiene practices, focused on one body type and gave “problematic” messages about consent.

“But the most concerning is the message it gives about gender, power and aggression,” she said. “It eroticises women being hurt or degraded.”

“Porn not only routinely portrays this, it says that it’s sexy.”

She called for better education for youth – a plea also made by The Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England after a report it commissioned into the same issues earlier this year.

The commissioner said “urgent action” was needed to develop children’s resilience to porn and its correlations to risky behaviour.

University of Auckland associate professor of psychology, Nicola Gavey, said the issues in Australia and the UK – especially the increasingly nasty misogyny – could be found here.

Gavey, part of a team leading the Pornography in the Public Eye project which is bringing the documentary here, said although research had not been conducted among teenagers in New Zealand, local figures usually ran in parallel.

She believed a conversation was needed about education – part of the reason for their project – which aimed to get people to talk seriously about porn.

“It’s so widespread, and yet you find when you try to talk about it, it’s really hard.”

The documentary will show on Thursday at the University of Auckland.

Further information: sexualpoliticsnow.org.nz

Story by Kirsty Johnston

8 August 2013

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/9139318/Pornography-being-used-for-teens-sex-education

No parole for former school principal with “deviant sexual preferences”

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A former school principal jailed for sexually abusing students has had his first parole bid declined, despite assurances he had a job lined up.

Elvis Dobson Shepherd, 52, was found guilty on two counts of sexual violation by oral sexual connection and two counts of indecent assault while he was teaching and living at Hato Petera College, a Maori Catholic boarding school on Auckland’s North Shore, in the early 1990s.

At the time of his sentencing in 2010 to eight years and four months’ jail time, he was principal of Feilding’s Hato Paora College.

Shepherd was first seen for parole in May, but the hearing was carried over until this month. The Parole Board declined his parole in their decision issued yesterday.

A psychological assessment report put Shepherd’s overall risk at medium low, with references made to a lack of capacity for relationship stability and deviant sexual preferences.

Proposals from Shepherd’s whanau group for his release included a ready-made job, the board said.

”We are told there is employment available to Mr Shepherd… as a consultant providing education resources. [The employers] are aware that there could not be any direct contact with children and that the employment would have to be related solely to administration and consultation.”

Other proposals included the possibility of electronic monitoring and an understanding Shepherd not enter ”any school, playground, park/reserve or place where children are likely to congregate unless under direct supervision”.

But, ultimately, the board decided he was not yet ready for parole, and would not be until he had completed the ”short intervention programme”.

”We believe all of the proposals for conditions are sound, but that leaves us still with the decision as to whether Mr Shepherd can satisfy us that he no longer poses an undue risk… and that such risk as he does pose can be adequately managed on parole.”

Although the board received letters of support from whanu and community, the submissions from his victims were damning, the board said.

”These submissions strongly assert that Mr Shepherd has used Maori institutions, Tikanga Maori, Te Reo Maori, and Maori education to further his own ends and to cover his behaviour.

”By way of conclusion, the submissions say that Mr Shepherd is manipulative and untrustworthy. They say that he has used his influence for his own ends and dressed this up as helping others.”

Shepherd will be seen again in July next year, following with an updated psychologist assessment.

Source

No parole for ‘deviant’ principal

Story by Craig Boyer. 7 August 2013

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/9013153/No-parole-for-deviant-principal

Battle against child pornography is global fight without borders

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IN NEW ZEALAND we are well aware that we lag behind similar developed countries in rankings for child pornography.

Our abuse figures continue to shame us. Stories of neglect and cruelty are daily media events.

But another level of abhorrence was added last week with the story of a child in California bought, adopted and traded for the purposes of satisfying paedophiles across three continents.

The perpetrators of this crime were tracked and the child rescued – with credit due to investigators at the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs, police, Customs officials and others. New Zealand is a leader in the global effort to combat activities such as this and its ugly cousin child pornography.

Our Department of Internal Affairs has been at the forefront of this worldwide effort to find and bring to account purveyors of activities that sexually exploit children.

The Innovative Super Squirrel Hunter software at Internal Affairs has been customised for more than 20 other countries and is hailed worldwide as a major tool in the campaign to free children from sexual exploitation.

In 2011, six men associated with what was described as the world’s biggest paedophile ring, were charged with child pornography offences committed in New Zealand.

At that time Detective Senior Sergeant John Michael said he believed it was likely to be the tip of the iceberg. “It’s rampant in New Zealand and if the public knew the scale of the offence here, they would be appalled.”

The attitudes and behaviour of consumers of child pornography around the world degrades and puts all children including our own, at risk.

It is a borderless crime.

Behind every single one of those images is a real child looking to the adult world to protect them. A report from Unicef in 2009 estimated millions of victims and stated that boys and girls of all ages and backgrounds and in every region of the world were subjected to this type of sexual abuse and exploitation.

The creators and clientele of the child pornography industry are unrelenting in their pursuit of victims. The child at the centre of last week’s case was a baby when he was purchased for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

Especially concerning is that in most cases no-one knows who or where these children are and rescuing them from exploitation is deeply challenging. The expertise and experience of the investigator at Internal Affairs in New Zealand was the vital connection that led to the rescue of the little boy.

But the practice will continue until there is widespread awareness and acknowledgement that wherever such images originate, children are severely harmed.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child endorsed by every country in the world, and which New Zealand signed up to in 1993, obligates our state agencies to act always in the best interests of children. Article 34 commits us to protect children from any kind of sexual abuse.

We applaud the police, Internal Affairs and Customs for their vigilance and dedication to protecting children.

We need to continue our support and investment in these programmes to ensure that the evil industry cannot flourish here in New Zealand.

Author: Barbara Lambourn, national advocacy manager, Unicef NZ.

Source: The Dominion Post. Friday, Jukly 12, 2013, p. A9

More kids committing sexual abuse due to easy access to hardcore porn

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Easy access to increasingly hardcore pornography and the sexualisation of childhood are being blamed for a rise in the number of children sexually abusing each other.

Growing numbers of children and teenagers are committing acts of sexual abuse against other children every year, with some as young as 11 being prosecuted for sexual offences.

Experts are calling for compulsory cyber-education programmes in all schools from primary level to stem the impact of explicit material.

Ministry of Justice figures received under the Official Information Act show that, since 2008, there have been 1299 prosecutions for sexual offences brought against young people under the age of 18.

This has risen steadily over the past five years, with 314 prosecutions last year compared to 204 in 2008. These are for offences ranging from rape to indecent assault and sexual grooming, with victims, both male and female, under the age of 16.

The youngest offender was 11. Only one of the offenders was a girl. Police say the jump in prosecutions was due to better knowledge and increased reporting of sexual abuse, rather than a rise in incidents.

To read full story go to:

More Kids Committing Sexcual Abuse – Story by Michelle Duff

8 July 2013

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/8889144/More-kids-committing-sexual-abuse